"It's a dream, it's a freaking dream to leave here with a medal, it's going to be huge."

Unfortunately, Gortat's team lost by 17 in their opener against Georgia. In 28 minutes, Gortat scored 12 points, grabbed 8 rebounds and dished 4 assists. He was 6/13 from the field, 0/3 on free throws and a -17 for the game. The Polish team made only 3 of 16 three-pointers, while Georgia made 61% of their shots for the game.

Slovenia

The hosts kicked off their tournament run against a tough Czech team. Slovenia last played the Czech Republic in Eurobasket 2004, before Goran Dragic was a member of the team.

"We had a couple of opportunities to make [an early 45-36 lead] a bigger lead but we didn't take advantage of them and the Czech Republic kept fighting and coming back," Bostjan Nachbar said in summary after the thrilling finale."So we had to fight hard all the way to the last seconds to get the win.It wasn't pretty, it wasn't the best game we've ever played, but we got the win and that's the important thing."

Ukraine

Beghin put his team up 57-55 with 1:41 remaining but that was to be their last score. Vlacheslav Kravtsov delivered a perfect block on Sam van Rossom that halted one last drive to land a decisive blow.